In Both Primary and Secondary Markets, Presentation Drives Price
Dealers and auctioneers agree that how artworks are displayed can meaningfully affect how buyers perceive and value them.
In the back storage rooms at Rago Auctions in Lambertville, New Jersey, is a large inventory of mostly wooden pedestals, painted black or white, in various sizes, for consignments of sculpture that arrive without them. Sometimes, painting consignments come in without frames. Rago doesn’t keep a supply of frames in back, because “frames are customized,” Meredith Hilferty, director of fine art sales at the auction house, told Observer, adding that she wouldn’t want to squeeze a painting into the wrong-sized frame.
Some contemporary paintings have paint along the sides of the canvas and are not intended to be framed; for those that ought to be framed, Hilferty informs consignors that if they don’t want to provide a frame, she will have one made and deduct the cost from the sale price. “Frames and pedestals help the sale, because they elevate the presentation,” she explained. Prospective bidders get a sense, thanks to those frames and pedestals, of what the artworks might look like in their homes. Without them, bidders need to use their imaginations, and while a work might sell anyway, it might sell for less. Better not to chance it.
Pedestals for sculptures and frames for paintings are generally viewed as accessories to be switched out as tastes change from one era or one collector to another. The art is what has prominence. Still, paintings without frames often do not look complete, according to the dealers and auctioneers who sell them, and small and even medium-sized sculptures may seem inconsequential when not shown on a pedestal that raises them to eye level.
And it’s not just dealers who believe this. So do artists. Deborah Butterfield, well known for her large-scale sculptures of wood and metal horses, some exceeding seven feet in height and weighing two tons, also produces equine figures in smaller dimensions—20 inches high, perhaps weighing only five pounds. For these, she tells dealers that they must be placed on pedestals. “They aren’t colts or ponies but adult horses, and when people put them on the floor, it makes them look like poodles or door stops,” she told Observer. “It drives me crazy.”
Butterfield sometimes builds simple wood pedestals for these smaller works—plain boxes of light-colored wood that “don’t draw attention to themselves” but ensure the sculptures are seen at the proper height. The pedestals have no monetary value in themselves, according to Greg Kucera, owner of an art gallery in Seattle, Washington, that has shown her work for many years. Some buyers don’t even bother to take them. “They may put her work on a table or shelf, or maybe they have pedestals in their homes that they prefer to use,” he said, though he acknowledged that whether for Butterfield’s work or that of other sculptors, “the prices are higher when there is a pedestal.”
Kucera also keeps picture frames on hand for two-dimensional works that arrive without them or in frames “so shabby that they will detract from the price. We probably have 20 or 30 that we keep on a rack and try to recycle.” On occasion, the gallery will pay for a frame, subtracting the cost from what the consignor receives, “but we don’t get really precious about frames. Buyers tend to throw most of them away and get the paintings reframed.”
Some artists do produce or provide frames for their own paintings, and occasionally those frames have value in themselves or add to the price of the whole piece. Katherine Degn, owner and director of New York’s Kraushaar Galleries, told Observer that she has “sold many, many Maurice Prendergast watercolors in simple, narrow frames made by his brother,” Charles, who also painted but is better known for his frames. Together or apart, they are prized.
Most consignments to galleries and auction houses, however, arrive with whatever frame one or another owner thought looked best, regardless of the artist’s intentions. Sandra Germain, owner of Shannon’s auction house in Greenwich, Connecticut, recalled a consignment, “a very valuable painting,” which its seller had taken out of its original frame and put in “a really hideous one, a plastic Hobby Lobby frame.” There wasn’t much she could do, and the painting was shown unframed in the sale catalogue.
Dealers and auctioneers try to do their best for the artworks they sell. Roger Reed, owner of New York’s Illustration House, which sells illustration art in its gallery and via auction, noted that in 2001, the gallery was selling a consigned work by Norman Rockwell, Triumphant Woman Carrying Auction Purchases, which needed a frame. The gallery had a framing budget, “but I knew the painting would sell for the same amount independent of the frame, the value of which would just be a rounding error, so it was an opportunity to have some fun. The painting was humorous, depicting a modern young woman carrying away her antiques from a country auction. She did not show much discernment, having gotten a cracked bedpan among other items of dubious quality. I ordered a huge Victorian-style frame encrusted with ‘loud’ floral and berry ornaments, just the kind of thing that this young woman might have bid on. When it arrived, it was a little too nice, so I worked on it further myself, slathering on a murky brown patina to make it look like more of a ‘find.'”
According to Reed, the optimal situation is “when a work had its original, historical frame, which was still in good condition. Even if it was a bit dinged up, we’d prefer to show it and sell it that way, even picture it in the catalogue that way. The next best was when we had a budget to frame a work, and could put it in something solid, non-gaudy, and right for the period.”
Works on paper—drawings, graphic prints, pastels, photographs and watercolors—are always displayed in a frame, often with a protective mat and glass, because they are more fragile and more difficult to clean than most painted canvases. But unlike canvases, works on paper are typically stored in a flat file without their frames.
Frames on paintings and pedestals under sculptures often seem to be part of the package for art collectors. “Frames, pedestals and bases make the pieces feel more finished,” said Marc Fields, owner of New York’s The Compleat Sculptor, which sells pedestals and bases to artists at prices starting at $250 and going as high as $2,500, depending on whether the material is laminate and Formica, Lucite or hardwoods and stone such as marble. Prices also vary by size.
Frames and pedestals do more than encase a painting or raise a sculpture. They offer some protection from bumps and kicks and act to spotlight the artworks, separating them from the surrounding world and prompting viewers to look more closely. Some contemporary artists, of course, want their work to be part of that surrounding world rather than in contrast to it, and frames, pedestals and bases can violate that aesthetic. Of course, you can’t satisfy everyone. And some artists consider that they have done their job by completing the work, leaving presentation to others, such as their dealers. “There often is a push-pull between artists and dealers,” Louis Newman, former director of LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, told Observer. “The artist wants the cheapest frame or pedestal, especially if the artist is paying for it, while the dealer wants something that is presentable.” Not only does a frame make a painting seem more finished, he added, “it’s one less thing for a client to have to think about. ‘Honey, what kind of frame should we get?’ ‘I don’t know, what do you think?'”
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